Tuesday, March 31, 2009

More visibility ... not just trade pubs, student & local press... there's an article in The Nation, Higher Education Takes a Hit, about "contingent labor" in higher education, "positions that have increasingly replaced full-time, tenure-track jobs" but "pay only about a fourth as much, per course, as tenure-track positions, seldom come with benefits and offer little job security or possibility of advancement."

Yes, we already know all that - old news to us - but how nice to read it in a national magazine. And even nicer for The New Faculty Majority (The Coalition) to get a tip of the hat:

Despite these organizing successes, some adjuncts say that under the sponsorship of some national organizations, like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which also represent full-time faculty, they often get short shrift.

That may soon change, if fourteen adjunct activists from across the country succeed in forming the New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity. The group, whose organizers first connected on a list-serv, is still in the planning stages. But co-chairs of the organizing committee Deborah Louis and Maria Maisto said they have already received membership requests.

What next? Get the word out. Even 'juncts can go viral.

Read the article, forward it, share it on Facebook, bookmark, review & rate it on the social bookmarking sites (Digg, BuzzFlash, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon & so on). After all, to cite NFM co-chair Deb Louis (from the article), "Now, with all the Internet potential, it becomes a whole different ballgame."

While you're at it, write a Web Letter about the article. According toThe Nation's Web Letter page, "Web Letters are continuously published e-mails from real people, signed with their real names. No registration is required. Each article page on The Nation includes a Web Letters link."

"Given that Weber State isn't known for its activist professors, administrators there were surprised recently when letters and e-mail messages started to arrive -- not from adjuncts or their tenure-track colleagues at the university, but from New York, California and elsewhere -- as far away as Japan.....And the Weber State plan struck many adjunct activists at other campuses as salt in the wounds -- enough so that they needed to let the university know that someone was watching. The Coalition for Contingent Academic Labor organized the letter writing to the university's senior officials, and distributed a sample that said, of adjuncts at Weber State:...the letter-writing campaign is part of an effort to let colleges know that people are watching the decisions they make about adjuncts."

That & New Faculty Majority Day are not the only campaign stops for the Visibility Express...

Comments imported from New Faculty Majority Day blog:

4 COMMENTS:

vlorbik said...

i don't read IHE regularly and have dropped off the adj-l list so this was indeed news to me. i probably oughta check there more often.

probably would too if they didn't spam me. MARCH 25, 2009 4:23 AM

SMStreet said...

Spam or not, IHE seems committed to adjunct issues, judging from its coverage. It's easy to check every morning, and it's easy to post comments on articles that affect us. In fact, I think the number and passion of such comments on previous articles has emphasized publications to the extent of the contingency crisis, if not alerted them to it. MARCH 25, 2009 4:31 AM

Vanessa said...

or was the reference to adj-l? The list can generate a lot of traffic not always characterized by optimum netiquette (eg snipping messages, changing subject line when subject changes). Send them to their own folder without supper. That's what filters are for. Setting for digest is another option. Also, you could add a keyword news feed widget to blog (so could we). MARCH 25, 2009 2:10 PM

Vanessa said...

But whichever - Steve is bang on about comments. I'd like to see a massive commenting campaign - moderately coordinated but minus attempts to micromanage or keep comments "on message." MARCH 28, 2009 3:00 PM

Co-Chair Deborah Louis – deb@northmountains.org - 828-206-0128
In their third conference call since their establishment as an organizing committee in early February, faculty activists from across the country agreed on the name New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity for the organization, which will represent the interests of and advocate for non-tenure-track faculty at colleges and universities nationwide. During the two-hour call on Sunday, March 15, the committee also referred a draft of their mission statement back to subcommittee for refinement, reviewed a rough outline of the proposed organizational structure, voted to approve the establishment of a temporary web site until a permanent web site is constructed, and approved the formation of new subcommittees on research and fundraising. The committee also decided to seek 501(c)3 status after incorporating later this year.

How online adjuncts can participate in New Faculty Majority Day raises a whole new set of questions - but ones imo we must address. Lost, your numbers are growing - and even more invisible among the already invisible.

There is no quad, no public space. Platforms for virtual classroom are subject to undetected monitoring - not like being visited and seeing that body sitting in the back of the classroom, occupying physical space. Welcome to the panopticon.

Is the institution proprietary (for profit) or public, the clicks side of institutional bricks? Would an email signature line with logo get you in trouble?

Is there an off-site (not on the system platform & sans management lurkers) for getting together online?

If the 30th is too late on your campus, schedule activities for earlier. Consider the whole month of April a Campus Equity Month. This is purposely a U-Organize-It kind of event, since conditions as well as schedules on campuses vary so widely.

No doubt showing my age with this one ... but I'm thinking happenings, street (or quad) theater... in addition to more mundane and easier to pull off...tees, bumper stickers, flyers, posters. And still thinking about what online adjuncts could. Perhaps the direction there is less digital (probably not wise to have a NMF Day signature line - albeit tempting - on emails to boss) and more on the street where they live local.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Remember the reading tradition in US union history? Reading Rooms in hiring halls. Samuel Gompers' cigar rollers voting to have a member on the clock read great books to them as they worked.

Why not an online reading room right here? Hence, another topic area signaled by Reading Room in the post title. I've been reading on four articles and was going to post links on all of them in this post but changed my mind. Instead, they will come one at a time, substantially excerpted, although I hope you will take the time click through and read each in its entirety. Now for the exercise in ellipisization

A Proposal to American Labor, by Richard B. Freeman & Joel Rogers, appearing in The Nation, June 24, 2002. discusses Open Source Unionism, its history, structure and current application. I was struck by the article's timeliness and relevance to our immediate concerns - and look forward to reading what you think. Please use the comment function to share your thoughts and reactions.

During [peak periods of union organization] ... another union formation... "minority" or "members only" unions, ... offered representation to workers without a demonstrated pro-union majority at their worksite. Such nonmajority unions were critical to organizing new sectors of American industry, providing a union presence in the workplace well before an employer recognized a collective-bargaining unit....

After World War II, however, unions effectively abandoned both "direct affiliation" and "minority unionism" as common practices....We believe his self-imposed limit on the meaning of membership today poses an unnecessary barrier to union influence and growth, and it should be reconsidered.... Today as in the past, nontraditional members in nonmajority settings can give labor an immense boost.... Adding nonmajority or otherwise nontraditional workers to union membership need not, moreover, conflict with the goal of traditional majorities-only organizing....

Scott Jaschik won this award for a set of 2008 articles in Inside Higher Education (IHE) on the rising use of adjunct professors. His articles focus on issus such issues as how colleges treat their workers, the impact on students of being taught by professors without tenure, and the effectiveness of unions and other groups that say they protect faculty interests. Links to the articles can be found here.